Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up on a Chicago commuter train. He has no idea who the pretty woman, Christine (Michelle Monaghan) in front of him is, but she knows him. When he goes to the washroom, the face in the mirror isn’t his own. Before he can even begin to figure out what has happened to him, the train he’s on explodes, and everyone dies.

Everyone, that is, except for Colter, who wakes up in a strange-looking contraption. He is told that he works for Beleaguered Castle, a section of the US military that works with a program called Source Code. Source Code allows to send a person back into the head of another person eight minutes before that person’s death. The same terrorist who bombed the train threatened to detonate a nuclear bomb in the heart of Chicago in six hours. Colter’s assignment is to identify the terrorist, so that he can be apprehended and the greater disaster can be averted. Colter’s only contact to the real world are Sgt. Goodwin (Vera Farmiga), his handler, and the inventor of the Source Code (Jeffrey Wright), whose drive to prove himself is so great that he is willing to send Colter through hell for it. Again and again and again.

And even though everyone tells Colter that he can’t change the past, Colter is determined to try.

At first glance, Source Code looks like a mix of Quantum Leap (time traveler with swiss-cheese-memory wakes up in a stranger’s body) and 7 Days (time traveler is sent by secret government agency to prevent a catastrophe), with a dash of Déjà Vu and some video game logic. A closer look reveals that Source Code is very much its own thing. The story unfolds mostly from Colter Stevens’s point of view, and the audience discovers the twists and turns (and there are many) almost as he does.

Source Code has plenty of action and explosions. Okay, so there’s only one explosion, which repeats over and over again. And even though Colter races a ticking clock (6 hours until the nuke goes up), the audience doesn’t really feel that ticking clock, because Colter’s journey is like a level in a video game – you get killed once, you restart the level, and knowing what you did wrong the last time helps you through the next try.

All of this would make for a very dull, shallow and pointless action movie. It’s a good thing then that Source Code isn’t that. Rather, the movie focuses on the characters.

On Colter’s feelings as he discovers what he is supposed to do, his frustration at being unable to save the people or even of talking to his father.

On Goodwin’s feelings as she begins to develop sympathy for Colter’s plight. Goodwin’s character shows the most development in the movie: she starts out as someone who might be a computer simulation, to the one who proves to have the most heart, the one who takes the greatest risk to do the right thing. For me, Goodwin was the movie’s main character.

On the project’s inventor’s almost monomanic ambition to see this through and prove himself, at any cost (to Colter). He’s the kind of person who you wouldn’t want to succeed, the one who you’d want to fail if that didn’t mean millions of people would die.

These three characters drive the movie, their journeys make the movie. They make Source Code an action movie with heart, where you don’t look for one-liners, but you feel for and with the characters.

The only one who doesn’t get to shine is Michelle Monaghan as Christine. That isn’t her fault, she does the best the script allows her to do, but that isn’t much: she suffers from being a romantic interest for the hero, whose existence is limited to eight repetitive minutes.

I’m afraid I can’t really say more about it, because it’s almost impossible to say more without spoilers. So suffice it to say that if you liked Inception, you’re likely to like Source Code: it is as clever as the much more expensive movie, but with much more heart.

With Source Code, Duncan Jones shows that Moon was not a fluke: he’s a director with brains and heart. Just like this movie.

Operation Nerd Voltron was a great success. Patty Rogers’ friends here in Indiana and the combined nerds of the world brought in a little more than $1,000 in 48 hours – much higher than I remotely expected or hoped, with contributions from as far away as Australia and Germany. You have our deepest thanks, whether you contributed, reposted to your blogs or just sent good thoughts our way.

We had a wacky situation-comedy-esque turn of events when it turned out we were beaten to the punch. Turns out there’s a new foundation in town that gives away iPads to children with cancer in Indianapolis – so new, in fact, that Patty is the first kid at Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital to actually get one. On the upside, we did get a bit of advance warning, so in the face of this change, we did what any self-respecting nerd would do: blinged the holy living heck out of the iPad. Carrying case, keyboard, and the like, plus an iTunes card of truly epic proportions. I considered a diamond-encrusted case but decided that would be a little, you know, excessive.

Since this money was given with the express purpose of “make Patty be a little bit less crazy,” we put aside the rest of the cash that would have gone to the iPad and told her to let us know what she’d like to do with it, with the only requirement being that it should be something she’d really enjoy. (The look on her face when hearing this news was, in fact, worth all the effort in and of itself.) The rest will be handed off to the family to help with expenses as soon as it transfers out of PayPal. Any further donations will go straight to the family.

All our thanks and love to everyone, and a special shout-out to the Aidan Brown Foundation (aidanbrownfoundation.com), who I hope will have great success in their ongoing mission to equip every cancer-fighting kid in the city with an iPad.

Both the Pogue and Rogers families were enormously touched by the tremendous outpouring of support for someone in need. Not only was this a much-needed practical help, it was also a reminder to all that no matter how bad this looks, they are not going through this alone.

(P.S.: This ended up being posted far and wide on blogs I’ve never even heard of, thanks to the efforts of many of you. If you posted the original request to your blog, could you please re-post so people know how it turned out? Thanks!) Update!

Operation Nerd Voltron was a great success. Patty Rogers’ friends here in Indiana and the combined nerds of the world brought in a little more than $1,000 in 48 hours – much higher than I remotely expected or hoped, with contributions from as far away as Australia and Germany. You have our deepest thanks, whether you contributed, reposted to your blogs or just sent good thoughts our way.

We had a wacky situation-comedy-esque turn of events when it turned out we were beaten to the punch. Turns out there’s a new foundation in town that gives away iPads to children with cancer in Indianapolis – so new, in fact, that Patty is the first kid at Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital to actually get one. On the upside, we did get a bit of advance warning, so in the face of this change, we did what any self-respecting nerd would do: blinged the holy living heck out of the iPad. Carrying case, keyboard, and the like, plus an iTunes card of truly epic proportions. I considered a diamond-encrusted case but decided that would be a little, you know, excessive.

Since this money was given with the express purpose of “make Patty be a little bit less crazy,” we put aside the rest of the cash that would have gone to the iPad and told her to let us know what she’d like to do with it, with the only requirement being that it should be something she’d really enjoy. (The look on her face when hearing this news was, in fact, worth all the effort in and of itself.) The rest will be handed off to the family to help with expenses as soon as it transfers out of PayPal. Any further donations will go straight to the family.

All our thanks and love to everyone, and a special shout-out to the Aidan Brown Foundation (aidanbrownfoundation.com), who I hope will have great success in their ongoing mission to equip every cancer-fighting kid in the city with an iPad.

Both the Pogue and Rogers families were enormously touched by the tremendous outpouring of support for someone in need. Not only was this a much-needed practical help, it was also a reminder to all that no matter how bad this looks, they are not going through this alone.

(P.S.: This ended up being posted far and wide on blogs I’ve never even heard of, thanks to the efforts of many of you. If you posted the original request to your blog, could you please re-post so people know how it turned out? Thanks!)

A couple of years ago, Armand was diagnosed with just about the worst case of cancer imaginable – a stage-four neuroblastoma that put a tumor the size of a cabbage in his stomach and left him with survival odds in the low double digits.

Armand is doing great now, two years later, and is cancer-free. But recently our circle of friends was hit with the cruel hammer of irony. One of my close friends these many years is Sarah Rogers. Last week her 12-year-old daughter Patty was diagnosed with stage-four neuroblastoma – exactly the same kind Armand had, and possibly an even worse case, with a tumor wrapped around her spine and another in her lung.

Right now she’s at Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis, getting the finest care available – as it happens, in one of the very same rooms in which my son spent so many days fighting for his life.

My goal is to help Patty stay a little more sane. If there’s one thing my family knows after 240 long days of inpatient treatment, it is that the days can go on endlessly. Armand got lucky – he had a DVD player and later an iPod to while away the days. And for a cancer patient who can barely even sit up, there is nothing better in the world than an iPod.

Unless, of course, it’s two years later and the world now has the iPad.

Patty Rogers doesn’t have her own computer, and even a laptop would be kind of hard to work with in the hard days ahead when she might be flat on her back for a long time. But an iPad? Perfect.

So I want to help get Patty an iPad ASAP and help her stay just a little bit more sane. But I can’t do it alone. I’m putting up $50 to start a fund, and Apple’s already agreed to give her a discount. I’d like to ask the nerds of the world to lend a hand – 50 cents, five bucks, ten bucks, anything you can give.

If we go over the limit needed, I’ll just throw in an iTunes store card to fill her up. If we go a lot more, I’m handing it straight over to the family for gas, food or whatever they need. Cancer is EXPENSIVE, and not just the medical treatment.

For convenience’s sake, we’re taking the online donations via Paypal. Send it to paulpogue1@hotmail.com and put “For Patty’s iPad” or something similar in the header.

One other request: If you have a blog or anyplace online where people listen to what you have to say, please repost this and see if anyone else is up for helping. Think of it as an all-nerd alert!

I know it’s asking a lot. But I also know that my family and I wouldn’t have made it through the last two horrible years without the enormous support of everyone around us, and I want to do everything I can to help Patty Rogers get the same help.